The World Darryl Gates Made: Race, Policing, and the Birth of SWAT

Editor’s note: In anticipation of what we all believe will be a stellar UHA conference this October 9-12 in Los Angeles, we are featuring Los Angeles as our theme this month. This is our second post; you can see others from this month as they are published as well as past pieces on the city […]

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George Romero’s Pittsburgh: City of the Living Dead

title card for the film with in black and white reading "George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead"

Editor’s Note: This is the sixth and final post in our theme for February 2025, “Celluloid City,” which explores the role of and interplay between cities and film. You can see all posts from the theme here. By Victoria Timpanaro October 1, 1968 was the world premiere of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living […]

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Aging Gang Members in Southern California – A Review of “The Marvelous Ones: Drugs, Gang Violence, and Resistance in East Los Angeles.”

Randol Contreras. The Marvelous Ones: Drugs, Gang Violence, and Resistance in East Los Angeles. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. By Dianne Violeta Mausfeld East Los Angeles is an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County with a population that is over 95 percent Latino, overwhelmingly Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans. Mexican immigrants settled in this […]

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Magical and Exiled Urbanisms in Miami

Editors note: This is our final entry in our theme month on The Latinx City. You can see all other entries for the theme month here. Additionally, readers interested in more on Miami can see other posts on the city published at The Metropole here. By Daniel Richter In 1987, Joan Didion published her book […]

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Latinx Entrepreneurs in Philadelphia – A Legacy of Resilience and Growth

Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in our theme for November, The Latinx City. By Stephanie Rivera-Kumar Philadelphia, one of the oldest cities in the United States, has a vibrant history shaped by immigrant contributions that continue to affect its neighborhoods and economy. In recent years, Latinx immigrants from countries such as the Dominican […]

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The “World City” at Work: How Street Vendors Transformed Global L.A.

Editor’s note: This is the third post in our theme for November, The Latinx City. By David Helps Jorge Cruz Cortes was still a teenager when the Los Angeles Police Department arrested him for selling household goods without a license in 1989. The eighteen-year-old from Oaxaca, Mexico had been in L.A. long enough to know […]

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Americanizing South Los Angeles through National Retailers and High-Security Malls

This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by David Bruno During the mid to late twentieth century, shopping centers in America served as community cornerstones, providing communal spaces and establishing national social and cultural connections based on mutual shopping experiences and product consumption. Weakening regional differences and contributing […]

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Digital Summer School: Sunset over Sunset

If you’ve been to Los Angeles recently and had the opportunity to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), perhaps you were able to drop in on its new exhibit, “Ed Ruscha/Now Then“. Ruscha has long been an observer of the city, especially with regard to its vernacular and commercial architecture. While the […]

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